patterns in prehistory humankinds first three million years aug 2006

Patterns in Prehistory: Humankind’s First Three Million Years, Fifth Edition Robert F. Wenke Deborah J. Olszewski OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Patterns in Prehistory: Humankind’s First Three Million Years [...]... symbolism 60,000 years ago 15 B.C Beginning of colonization of Australia by modern humans Roman conquest of Europe 475 B.C Beginning of La Tène complex society in Europe 800 B.C Beginning of Halstatt complex society in Europe 100,000 years ago 230,000 years ago 1.7 million years ago 2.5 million years ago 2.6 million years ago Origins of agriculture in Eastern North America 3100 B.C Beginning of Egyptian... states in South America 8500 B.C Origins of agriculture in the Middle East A.D 300 Beginning of Classic Maya civilization in Mesoamerica A.D 1 Beginning of the Teotihuacán state in the Valley of Mexico and Moche civilization in South America 20–15,000 years ago Beginning of colonization of the Americas by Paleoindians 32,000 years ago Neandertals become extinct 40,000 years ago Modern humans begin to... Beginning of Harappan civilization in the Indus Valley 3600 B.C Beginning of Mesopotamian civilization in the Middle East 5700 B.C Origins of agriculture in South America 6000 B.C Agriculture begins to spread into Europe from the Middle East First stone tools appear in Africa Appearance of Minoan civilization in the Aegean 2000 B.C Genus Homo appears in Africa Appearance of Shang civilization in China... 1150 Beginning of the Aztec state in Mexico A.D 1000 Beginning of Hohokam, Ancestral Pueblo and Mogollon complex society in the North American Southwest 6500 B.C Origins of agriculture in Asia A.D 800 Beginning of Mississippian complex society in the North American Southeast 7500 B.C Origins of agriculture in Africa A.D 600 Initial date for colonization of Hawai’i 8000 B.C Origins of agriculture in Mesoamerica... 160,000 years ago 1000 B.C 3 million years ago Beginning of radiation of Australopiths in Africa 5 million years ago Australopith hominins appear in Africa 1 Prehistory, History, and Archaeology History is philosophy teaching by examples Dionysius of Halicarnassus (c 40 b.c.) History is bunk Henry Ford T he archaeologist-adventurers of film and fiction never seem too concerned about what they are looking... archaeological sites in time and making inferences about the extinct societies that created them does not “explain” the past But can we explain the past? What would we be trying to explain, and how? Take, for example, something as apparently simple as the origins of agriculture—a topic discussed in detail in chapter 6 After two and a half million years as hunter-foragers, about 10,000 years ago our ancestors began... archaeology is in fact a uniquely interesting science And certainly its origins are in rather romantic bygone eras In the early 1800s, for example, the Italian adventurer Giovanni Belzoni looted dozens of ancient Egyptian tombs in Thebes (near modern Luxor) and sold their riches in Europe Belzoni crept and crawled through miles of tunnels in the stinking, dusty air of these crypts, smashing hundreds... mainly in terms of wind, rain, sun, and oceanic patterns, in other words, in terms of natural causes In short, Herodotus analyzed, he did not just ascribe the Nile’s flood to the inscrutable will of the gods Similarly, in his late fourth-century b.c history of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides tried to explain how the struggle began He described the personalities involved, the strategies of the warring... were after and a rather romantic reason for their quest In 1876, for example, the German Heinrich Schliemann, his imagination fired by his schoolboy readings of Homer (in the original Greek), ravaged the archaeological site of Hissarlik, in western Turkey, looking for the home of the heroes of the Trojan 1 2 PATTERNS IN PREHISTORY War, as chronicled in The Iliad Schliemann’s notebooks show that he made... Attributed to Mark Twain, Herodotus, and others Attempts to reconstruct the past may be “static” in the sense that in studying the long-dead citizens of Pompeii we may be interested only in how they lived on the day they were all killed 9 10 PATTERNS IN PREHISTORY But most attempts to analyze the past involve some sense of sequence, usually in the form of cultural changes over time Reconstructing ancient cultures . ago 160,000 years ago 230,000 years ago 1.7 million years ago 2.5 million years ago 2.6 million years ago 3 million years ago 5 million years ago Origins of agriculture in Asia Origins of agriculture in. Patterns in Prehistory: Humankind’s First Three Million Years, Fifth Edition Robert F. Wenke Deborah J. Olszewski OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Patterns in Prehistory: Humankind’s First Three Million. America Beginning of Egyptian civilization Beginning of Harappan civilization in the Indus Valley Beginning of Mesopotamian civilization in the Middle East Origins of agriculture in Africa Origins of